Wednesday, November 30, 2016

There
is nothing new about men preferring to believe lies told by women who
have committed crimes and who have made false allegations against
others. What is new, however, is the the phenomenon of women tending to prefer to believe lies told by female criminals.

Monday, November 21, 2016

They were called “War-Marriage Vampires,” “Fake War Brides,”
"Allotment Wives,” “Allotment Brides,” “Allotment Annies” and “Victory
Girls” – women who married multiple young men so they could fraudulently profit
from the monthly government allotment checks they would receive for each
husband and, when she got lucky, would when the husband died in battle receive
a bonus payment.

An article published in 1950 stated that “hundreds of
Allotment Annies were convicted of preying on servicemen during and after World
War II. Convictions totaled 242 in 1946 but dropped to 47 in 1950, The effects
of the Korean War will not be known for some time.” [Frances Spatz, “Allotment
Annies are at it again,” The American Weekly (San Antonio Light) (Tx.), Dec.
17, 1950, p. 2]

FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 2): Chicago, Dec. 2. – Mrs. Helen
Ferguson Drexler, 22 years old, has confessed to having been married to sixteen
men in the past three years. The young woman, who was arrested here today by
Government agents, admitted having married the men,all of whom where either soldiers or sailors,
for the sole reason of securing the allotment issued by the War Risk Bureau to
a wife of a man in the service.

“You men try to make me admit the marriage of ten men,” she
said. “Why, that is just more than half. I had sixteen of them during my career
and was going to marry another in a few days if I had not been arrested.

“The first man to whom I was married was an auto salesman,
inBoston, in 1918. After the wedding we
lived together until he was called to France. Shortly afterward I got word of
his death. I tried to forget, but being by myself I was soon forced to seek
company, and finally married a man from New York. I was getting the allotment
from the Government due me from my first husband at that time.”

“I lived with my second husband contentedly for several
months. He joined the navy. I got an allotment from him. One day I met a woman
who heard of the two allotments I was getting from the Government, amounting to
$60 a month. She suggested that inasmuch as the money was easy I should keep it
up and marry again. I could make hundreds of dollars a month by this scheme, if
it worked.”

“I consented and married again, this time a soldier in the
Brooklyn Navy Yard named John Kelly. He signed his allotment to me. I left him
and went in search of another husband.”

“From then on life was just one husband after another. The
income amounted to $500 a month. After two years I had married ten men. I can’t
recall all the names. I went to Norfolk, Va., and married again. Each time I
only stayed with my husband until I got the allotment signed to me and then
left.

[“22-Year-Old Girl Married 16 Service Men; Collected $500
Monthly in Allotments,” New York Times (N.Y.), Dec. 3, 1921, p. 1]

***

FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 2): Mrs. Helen Drexler Ferguson, 2
years old, was released yesterday from Geneva jail, twelve days before the
expiration of her six month’s sentence for marrying a number of soldiers and
sailors estimated at from fifteen to seventeen, in order to get their
allotments.

She is to undergo an operation at Aurora hospital.

Following the operation Mrs. Ferguson will be given a ticket
to Washington, where her parents reside, by the Salvation Army, which has taken
an interest in her case.

Mrs. Ferguson says she has no other plans fort the future
than to go to some small city where she can find congenial employment.

FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 2): From the looks of things, Mrs.
Korene Stankowich, who at last count had accumulated at least 16 husbands,
won’t be charged with bigamy.

To accuse a wife of bigamy there must be at least two
complaining husbands.

Thus far, there seem to be no complaints.

~ SOME ARE INELIGIBLE

Such husbands of the blithe redhead, who explained it all by
saying that when a woman is very much alive there is no knowing what she will
do, who did get peeved about the surplus of husbands are in no position to
charge bigamy. Those few divorced her and, presto, they have no official
standing.

The other husbands, some of whom met still other husbands
under the guise of cousins, bother or plain dear friends, have made no attempt
to get their mutual wife in trouble for being too enthusiastic about acquiring
men.

In fact the low man on the totem pole, Pvt. Alexander
Stankowich, of the Marines, No. 16, rushed out to round up bail money from her
large circle of husbands until the Navy Shore Patrol interfered with with such
enterprise by putting him in custody.

Julian G. McIntosh, chief assistant prosecutor, admitted
Thursday there had been no complaints and that the FBI, which has interrupted
Mrs. Stankowich’s marrying career bu putting her in jail for a surplus of pay
allotments rather than husbands, had not consulted with the prosecutor’s
office.

~ MIGHT PROLONG WAR

Some of her husbands are overseas and while he did not say
it, McIntosh hinted that it might seriously hamper the successful prosecution
of the war to start bringing them back. Both the Army and Marines, not to
mention Mrs. Stankowich, have kept the husbands pretty well scattered and it might
slow down action on all the fronts.

Uncle Sam is not concerned with her occupation but with the
fact that she accumulated $1,500 from the military coup of her domestic
entourage as allotment pay. As far as the FBI is concerned, only one of her
husbands should have sent her money.

~ SHE STAYS IN JAIL.

Mrs. Stankowich still was in jail Thursday because her most
recent mate was suppressedbefore he
could contact the rest of the family circle for her $4,000 bail.

The FBI also was holding her incommunicado since every time
a reporter talked to her more husbands kept developing and it was feared it
might become embarrassing to a large part of the general public. “You never know
who might be another husband.”

FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 2): Because after 12 or more
civilian husbands, Mrs. Korene Stankowich started marrying into the Army and
Navy, she wound up in Federal Court here last week.

Never once was thre thirty-five-year-old redhead threatened
with bigamy, although her record indicates she was opposed to divorce, but
trouble hove up because she was getting pay allotments, according to the FBI,
from three soldiers and a Marine.

~ REVEALS RECORD

It wasn’t until after she was brought into Federal Court
that Mrs. Stankowich revealed her nonstop marriage record which pales anything
covered before.In fact, she had
considerable trouble recalling husbands. Uncle Sam recalled her recent four,
all military men and accused her of getting a tidy $2,500 from the Government
in allotments. However, Pvt. Alexander Stankowich, of the Marines, Husband No.
16, was undiscouraged and rushed ourt to round up $4,000 bail from her circle
of husbands until a Navy shore patrol stepped in and stopped him.

~ TRACED TO NEW YORK

Mrs. Stankowich evidently sharpened up her technique on the
civilians for records show that five years ago she was careening around New York
pretending to be one of the famous Couzens’ family, of Detroit. None of her
husbands – most are now overseas – have come forward to charge her with bigamy
but one civilian, who shucked her legally in bygone years, revealed that she
used the heiress gag on him.

VIETNAM WAR

FULL TEXT: San Diego, Calif. – Go-go dancer Pandora Cooke,
who allegedly married 14 servicemen for their allotment checks, has been
sentenced to 18 months in prison for making a false statement to the Federal
Housing Administration.

Mrs. Cooke, 29, a San Diego mother of three, wept as she was
sentenced yesterday by U. S. District Court Judge Dennis F. Donovan stayed
execution of sentence for two weeks and said she would be eligible for parole
at any time during imprisonment.

The judge also dismissed 10 other counts against Mrs. Cooke
who pleaded guilty Jan. 20 of making a false statement to obtain FHA credit for
a loan on a house. She had been indicted on nine counts of defrauding the
Government of $1348 in allotment checks and one count of claiming to be a
Vietnam war widow to receive the benefits of a $10,000 insurance policy.

One of her husbands, Seaman Robert D. McColm, 23, testified
at an annulment proceeding in Denver last October the FBI informed him Mrs.
Cooke had 13 other husbands and was receiving allotment checks from them.

McColm, who said he was intoxicated when her married Mrs.
Cooke in Las Vegas, Nev., after meeting her the previous night in a local bar,
was granted an annulment.

The dark-haired entertainer was arrested here by the FBI
last Aug. 23. She was released on $250 bail and has become the feature
attraction at a San Diego cabaret.

FULL TEXT: San Diego, Oct. 13 – Pandora Cooke, 29, a go-go
girl who allegedly had 14 husbands, mostly servicemen, was indicted on charges
of defrauding the Federal Government.

Mrs. Cooke, who also used the name Anita Simons and other
aliases, was charged in nine counts with defrauding the Government of a total
of $1348.40 in military allotment checks.

She was accused in the 10th count of falsely
claiming to be the widow of a marine killed in Vietnam to receive benefits of
his $10,000 insurance policy.

The San Diego mother of three, who was arrested here by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, is free on $250 bail. She is expected to be
arraigned in federal court Oct. 24.

Her most recent husband, Seaman Robert D. McColm, 23,
received an annulment Tuesday in a Denver court on grounds he was intoxicated
at the time of the wedding. He testified he met Mrs. Cooke in a San Diego bar
June 30, danced and drank that night and woke up in Las Vegas, Nev., the next
morning a married man.

Most of the names of husbands were “not available,” an FBI
spokesman said. But, he added, “our file is about as thick as your fist.”

Monday, November 14, 2016

FULL TEXT:New York,
Oct. 30. – THE “Victory girls” lovely ladies who are making careers of marrying
servicemen say they are prompted by love and patriotism. Sniffing Federal
prosecutor’s charge that the sole motive of the Victory girls, so named by one
of them, is greed for government allotment checks. No matter whether they
marry for love or money, Brig. Gen. H. N. Gilbert, director of the Office of
Dependency Benefits, wants no part in trying to tell a faithful wife from a
Victory girl.

While wayward wives are certainly exceptions in the long
list of mates who are receiving checks from Uncle Sam, enough of them have been
picked up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that they can’t be ignored any
longer. They have, in fact, succeeded in making Congress Victory girl
conscious.

That threw a scare into Gen. Gilbert. For, from the way some
members of the House Military Affairs Committee were talking at a hearing on allotments,
it appeared that the Dependency Bureau might be voted the responsibility of
checking on the behavior of all wives and to cut off the monthly allotments for
those who were unfaithful. Gen. Gilbert promptly objected to any plan to turn
his bureau into a domestic relations court.

He admits that the Victory girls are a problem, but he
argues that “the Army can do nothing but consider it a personal one which can
be settled only by the soldier himself in the civil courts when he returns.”

Grace Vivian Reinert of Washington, D. C, who is one of the
girls, says it’s really much simpler than that.

“The girls figure’ that they’re making the boys happy and
that ‘ before the war is over the husbands will either be killed or glad to
forget about their marriages.”

Grace speaks with authority for in her 22 years she has
managed to be married four times, thrice to sailors. She married her first
love, a Kansas City policeman, when she was 14. They were divorced. Her second,
a West Coast seaman, C. F. Corn, was killed at Pearl Harbor. (But he had made
his $10,000 life insurance payable to his mother.)

And if Nos. 3 and 4 – Machinist’s Mate Kenneth Reinert and
Seaman James McKinney – wish to get in touch with her she can be found in
Federal prison.

***

GRACE was picked up when Reinert and McKinney happened to
meet and compare notes – and wives – in Washington. Each found that his
allotment check was going to Grace. She was picked up and lodged in Galinger
Hospital.

Before she escaped from that institution she explained the
activities and motives of the Victory girls.”

“Its patriotism – for they give each husband a little
happiness before he’s shipped. They don’t worry much about having more than one
hundred because the sailors are at sea most of the time, and the other
servicemen are shifted from camp to camp.

“When one of these girls gets into San Diego or Norfolk (big
naval bases) she gets a job in a tavern first thing. That way she meets a lot
of sailors, and those young kids off the farms for the first time are easy
pickings.”

In spite of their preferences for “easy pickings,” Grace
insists most of the Victory girls marry for love. She did, anyway. She also
practiced what she preached. After her escape from Gallager Hospital she was
found in San Diego – working in a taproom.

Grace was returned in Washington declaring her undying
devotion to husbands. But Federal judge Matthew M. McGuire was unmoved by her
emotion. He sentenced her to from one to three years for bigamy and from six to
18 months for escaping.

Grace’s claim on love, marriage, and allotment checks is as
nothing compared to that of Vivian Nelms Eggers, 34, who so adored her seven
Army mates that she divorced none of them. She sought to prove she was not
marrying for money by pointing out that she received checks from only two of
the seven.

Her case, like those “allotment wives,” came to the
attention of the Dependency Bureau when someone noticed that checks for Mrs.
Campbell and Mrs. Eggers were being sent to the same Cincinnati address. It is
conceivable, of course, that wives of two men in uniform may live at the same
address, particularly in crowded cities near large posts. Nevertheless, an
investigation is made to see that the two names don’t represent one and the
same person. In Vivian’s case they did.

***

UPON her arrest and her ready confession to seven marriages
and no divorces, she was whisked off to Arizona to be tried for bigamy because
of her marriages to Pvts. Campbell and Corsett.

“You just get to drinking and having a good time, and you
meet some one that’s kinda nice and that’s the way it happens,” is Vivian’s
alibi.

But Federal Judge Dave W. Ling of Phoenix was unsympathetic.

He sentenced her to 18 months in prison for marrying
Campbell, and granted her five years probation for marrying Corsett.

Pretty Doris June Shensky shows no special preference for
Army, Navy or Marine Corps. She drew allotments from a soldier husband and a
sailor husband and misappropriated the allotment check of a Marine lieutenant!

The busy life of this pretty 21-year-old came to light after
the harried Dependency Bureau opened a branch office in Philadelphia to handle
cases in that district.

Doris, the daughter of Samuel Ruckstool, a Philadelphia
street car motorman, married Arnold S. Shensky, a South Philadelphia butcher,
in February, 1941. They lived with the Ruckstools until Arnold became Pvt.
Shensky of the 113th Infantry, stationed at Woodbine, N. J.

Pvt. Shensky, who loved Doris devotedly, made an allotment
for her benefit. He bragged around camp about the way she was helping the war
effort by volunteering constantly for hostess duties in Philadelphia canteens.

“Most men have inherent faith in their wives,” says Brig.
Gen. Gilbert. Shensky was one of the trusting husbands.

He didn’t dream that Doris was already making merry with
Seaman Russell E. Tracy of Barre, Vt., stationed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
Tracy spent many a jolly evening in the Ruckstool home. Apparently Doris’
parents thought that she had told Tracy her marital status. Anyway, they never
mentioned it.

Then Tracy was transferred to California. The separation was
more than he could stand. He wrote pleading letters to Doris to come to
California and marry him. Doris agreed. She became Mrs. Tracy in Los Angeles on
April 24, 1943

Shortly thereafter Tracy was sent to sea. He directed that a
monthly allotment check be sent to Doris. She settled down for a time, in a Los
Angeles rooming house. Lonely for Tracy, she decided that being near Shensky
was better than nothing. But in other to get back to Philadelphia she had to
have more money than she could find in her purse.

Among the letters piled on a table in the front hall of the
rooming house was one addressed to Mrs. Ida L. Coleman, containing an allotment
check for $170. Doris took it, cashed it, and returned to Philadelphia.

She was picked up there after Mrs. Coleman complained to the
Marine Corps Allotment Office at Arlington, Va., that she hadn’t received her
check.

On Dec. 13, Doris will have to appear for a hearing in Los
Angeles on charges of forgery and larceny of a Government check. However, she
hopes for leniency because she has repaid Mrs. Coleman’s $170, has made
restitution for the allotment checks she received as Mrs. Tracy and has had her
second marriage annulled.

In addition to problems posed by bigamists, the Dependency
Benefits Office and the F.B.I, are now investigating servicemen’s wives who
pretend motherhood in order to get additional benefits for children.

This new twist to the allotment racket was uncovered in
Washington, D. C, and as a result Myrie M. McGuire is facing an appearance
before a Federal grand jury on charges of conspiracy to defraud the Government.

Mrs. McGuire, 25-year-old wife of a Navy warrant officer
stationed at Seattle, is charged with arranging for pre-natal care and delivery
of a child purportedly hers and her husband’s.

The child, according to Washington police, is that of
Catherine Samoza, 23-year-old unmarried mother, with whom, they say, Mrs.
McGuire made a deal. She arranged for free hospital care at Government expense
for Catherine in return for the privilege of calling the baby hers. Then she
claimed dependency benefits for the child.

Records of the Navy Clinic and Hospital show that Catherine
was treated as “Mrs. McGuire” and that the baby was born under the name of
McGuire.

Police say that the frightened and unfortunate Catherine
Samoza, who is to testify against Mrs. McGuire, will probably not be prosecuted
in the conspiracy.

***

MOST of the servicemen are blithely ignorant of the behavior
of these wives who become entangled with the law. Of the 20 women so far
convicted, and the many now under investigation, husbands are involved in only
a few cases.

One such husband was Cpl. Ramon Bruce Jarago of Denver.

Cpl. Jarago applied for a family allowance for “Mrs. Hope
Rita Jarago,” representing her as his wife and offering as evidence of the
relationship a photostatic copy of a marriage certificate for Hope Hurley and
Ramon Bruce Jarago. Inquiry developed that Hope Rita and Hope Hurley were two
different people.

Both the soldier and Hope Rita pleaded guilty before Federal
Judge J. Foster Symes In Denver. Cpl.. Jarago was sentenced to two years in
Leavenworth Prison, while Hope Rita was sentenced, to serve six months in the
Denver County jail.

With such cases as these to worry Brig. Gen. Gilbert and his
staff, it is little wonder that he wants civilian courts to handle the wayward
wife situation.

Still another side to this question of these
here-today-and-gone-tomorrow marriages for servicemen, according to a
subcommittee of the House Naval Affairs Committee, concerns the number of child
brides who are rushed into marriage by soldiers, sailors and marines and are
then deserted on their honeymoons.

Two of these youngsters, Erma Sitler, 12, of Hillside, Md.,
and Betty Lou Parsley, 14, of Norfolk, wound up recently under the protective
wing of New York juvenile welfare agencies.

“These are only two of the many tragedies which occur here
every day,” says Mrs. Mabel P. Grange, Norfolk secretary of the Travelers Aid
Society. “Something should be done to punish these men who marry children and
then go away and forget about them.”

All too often these’ deserted brides, robbed of their
childhood, grow up too suddenly, and take their places in the rapidly growing
lists of “Victory girls.”

[Ruth Reynolds, “The ‘Victory Girls’; Bigamy Is Their
Racket, Though They Claim Marriages to Servicemen Are Prompted by Love and
Patriotism- Government Calls it Greed for Allotment Checks.” The Everyday
Magazine (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, (Mo.)), Oct. 31, 1943, p. 1]

FULL TEXT: In Newark, New Jersey, they’re suggesting that
the Army ought to design a special ribbon for mothers-in-law. Newark is where
the Office of Dependency Benefits functions. It’s the branch of the War
Department that mails out 67 truckloads of allowance of allotment checks every
day. The “first aid” to ODB’s investigating department is the mother-in-law.

Girls who marry servicemen just to get monthly dependency
checks forget that for every husband they acquire, they get a mother-in-law,
too. She is apt to be lynx-eyed.

“Don’t think the mothers don’t keep track of their boys,” an
official of the ODB says, “and don’t think they’re going to keep quiet when
they suspect the boys are sending allowances to women who don’t deserve them.
It’s frequently the mother-in-law who informs us of such irregularities as
bigamy. And the ODB has no record of any woman being acquitted after we have
caused a charge of bigamy to be prosecuted against her.”

It is to the Federal Bureau of Investigated that the ODB
turns when such serious charges as that of bigamy have to be investigated, and
this was has produced a considerable quota of women who make a career of this
crime.

There was, for example, the case of Mary Massengale, of
Bowdon, Georgia, who was arrested in Atlanta on charges of unlawfully cashing
Army allotment checks.Officials declare that she has five husbands, four of
them kin service. Then there who collected one husband in the Navy and two in
the Army. The FBI claims that a blonde on the West Coast married five sailor
and two civilians. Recently sentenced to two years in Federal prison and fined
$2000 in Korene Buckner of Michigan, who added three soldier spouses to her collection
of eleven civilian husbands. She had managed to cash only one payment from her
last soldier when the FBI caught her.

The polyandrous Wac is Julia Pearl Davis Steele, and the FBI
says she had been absent without leave from Fort Des Moines since September 1.
They also say that her history of marital adventures began a long time before
she joined the Wac. At 15, Julia became the wife of Seaman James Clayton Steele
of the Norfolk Navy Base.

That was in December, 1940. Eleven months later Julia switched
her affections of the Army, marrying Corporal Frederick George Brown of Camp
Berkeley, Texas. Corporal Brown was shipped overseas in May, 1942, and shortly
thereafter Seaman Steele obtained a divorce. Eight months after that, still
married to Corporal Brown, Julia went through the marriage ceremony again –
this time with Army Private David Laub, at Augusta, Georgia. He was sent
overseas.

Last April, Julia joined the Wac and was sent to Fort Des
Moines for training, but vanished five months later. FBI agents found her, they
said, living in New York with another man. The United States Attorney in
Atlanta, who investigated the case, charged that Julia has collected $50 a
month as the wife of Corporal Brown since June 1942, and an additional $50 a
month since marrying Lamb.

Whether it was one of her mothers-in-law who pointed the
finder disclosed. Nor does the FBI tell who tell who put them on the trail of
Vilma Suberly, indicted in Sacramento on a charge of illegally obtaining $4600
in dependents’ allotments.

“It’s a lie!” snapped Vilma, when agents said that she
changed the color of her hair with every change of husbands, becoming a
platinum blonde for one man, a Titian for another and a brunette for third.
“Look at my hair!” protested the girl. “It’s like corn silk.” Vilma comes from
Jones Prairie, Texas. She is said to have used 28 names. H. C. Van Pelt,
assistant agent in charge of the FBI in San Francisco, said the girl’s first
husband was Herman Goodman, an Army private whom she married in 1938 in Galveston,
Texas. The second, they say, was Herbert Edwin March, a civilian whom she
married in 1938 in Galveston, Texas. The second, they say, was Herbert Edwin
March, a civilian whom she married in Beaumont, Texas, in 1939.

Not all cases that the OBD investigates, with the
co-operation of the G-men, reveal deliberate violations of the law. In a number
of them, fraud is found to be unintentional, as the women involved are found to
have obtained mail-order divorces. In other cases, the woman has in fact received
an interlocutory degree and has not understood that she wasn’t free to marry
again until the decree became absolute.

Such women marry soldiers or sailors, telling them that they
have been divorced. Then they apply for dependency benefits, believing that
they are entitled to them.

“Then, too, don’t forget that we have 48 states with 48
different marriage laws,” the Office of Dependency Benefits spokesman says.

Some problems passed to the ODB by amateur aides don’t
really belong to that harassed organization at all. Its officials protest that
it’s none of their business if lonely wives quarrel with service husbands – as
Sarah Willemson with Leo, her spouse in the South Pacific.

“I want to marry one of these native girls,” Leo wrote,
enclosing a snapshot of himself with a girl in a grass skirt, “and become king
of a certain island group.” Indignant, Sarah said she wanted neither Leo nor
his allotment. Then several men, perfect strangers, who read about it, wrote
Mrs. Willemson to say that the grass-skirted girl was just a professional
model. It was all a gag, they claimed, and Leo was only fooling!

Sunday, November 6, 2016

FULL TEXT: Life has ended at 40 for for Arthur Key, Jr.,
alimony jail alumnus, who yesterday offered himself as a guinea pig to medical
science – without any strings.

Penniless and dependent for support on his 76-year-old
mother. Key, a strapping chap, blond and well set up, frankly said that only
two courses were left to him – to return to alimony jail or to give up his life
to science.

“The latter is far preferable,” he announced grimly.

Key sat in the cozy parlor of his mother’s home at 602
Central Ave., Cedarhurst, a large old-fashioned white frame house, and calmly
discussed life and death, manners and morals, love and hatred.

~ Licked by Jail, He Says

“Mentally, I’m licked,” he frankly admitted. “The doctors
say physically there isn’t a thing wrong with me; but I haven’t the desire to
get back into the world and lick this thing. Three months in the alimony jail
kills your soul. The cards are stacked against me.”

Key confessed he has had the best medical. Psychiatric,
spiritual and legal advice that is possible to obtain. Friends have been more
than kind in trying to help him re-establish himself, but he has cut himself
off from all friends.

“I doubt if I’ve been out of the house three times this
year,” he said.

There is nothing dramatic in his manner. He acts like a man
who is beaten and long ago gave up caring. Everything that meant anything to
him has been taken away he feels that if any good can come from his last beau
geste, he will be serving a larger purpose.

“My little girl will suffer from this I know,” Key went on,
“so will my mother. I have taken that all into consideration. But it won’t hurt
them any more than having me this way, will it? What good am I now?”

Key shrugged a pair of athletic shoulders. He brought out a
leather-bound book of pictures, photographs of his daughter, whom he is
devoted. Every Saturday afternoon he would take her to Prospect Park, before
the trouble. He made the float in which she rode in the Anniversary Day parade,
from the Baptist Church of the Redeemer. He mended her toys.

~ Idolized Child, He Says

“I idolized the child,” he said simply. “What good is all
this going to be for her? Will she grow up thinking her daddy was all bad?”

The Keys were married in Baptist Temple, in August, 1925, and
lived happily until 1925, when his wife brought suit for separation. At the
time he was employed at $70 a week with the real estate division of a reputable
automobile company.

“I was hounded to death at my job by the court procedure,”
Key said. “My health broke down and I was forced to go to a sanitarium. I was
out just two weeks, when the contempt order sent me to Alimony Jail in
Mineola.”

~ Spent Three Months in Pen

Actually, there was no alimony jail in Mineola, but persons
held for alimony arrears are detained in a detention pen. Records show Key was
cited for contempt for failing to pay back alimony of $183.50 on Feb. 10, last,
and sentenced to the county jail detention pen and released May 10.

Three months in a room 15 feet square broke Key’s spirit.
But he he has no complaint of the treatment he received there. The meals were
good and Sheriff Hendrickson, he said, was “a square fellow.”

“What’s wrong with the place?” he repeated. “I saw men’s souls
crumble before my eyes. I saw men break mentally. I sat up ten nights with one
chap, until he got hold of himself. You can’t imagine the horror.

~ ‘Something Happens Inside’

“It’s not anything
you can put your finger on. It’s something that happens to you inside. If I
should go out and get a job now, the probably will hound me again to pay
alimony, and I’d be clamped back there in a jiffy. But they’ll never take me
alive again. I’ll see to that.”

Born in Brooklyn of cultured English parents, Key went to P.
S. 11 and old Commercial High School. He worked 27 years in Brooklyn for
reputable companies, he said. He is man of refinement and sensitivity. Two of
his sisters married physicians. His mother, a gentle little woman whose
lavender shawl well becomes her silvery hair, still speaks with a marked
British accent.

“I can’t go on having a burden to my mother,” Key announced.
“Something must be done to end this. The only ax I have to grind is to do
something to amend our marriage laws. They have legally murdered me. Science
may just as well claim my body. I want nothing for it.”

While in alimony jail. Key wrote a poem, which he dedicated
to his wife. Ava Jane Key, and her lawyer, Frederick N. Van allndt of Garden
City. It is written in the Robert Service vein. Key stating that he had always
admired the Canadian poet.

He stepped forth today from the alimony jail on Raymond St.,
took a deep breath and observed it was a bit cooler than the day he went in ,
in July, 1930.

His release was ordered by Justice Paul Bonynge in
matrimonial branch of Brooklyn Supreme Court after a cross-fire of legal
artillery on his behalf has raised the contention that his detention since then
was without legal justification.

The point was not judicially decided, however, for while
Justice John B. Johnson was considering it in a habeus corpus proceeding.
Justice Bonynge ordered Politano’s release on the humane ground that he could
not possibly comply with the provision that he post a bond for $1,000 to
guarantee future alimony.

That clause, it was contended by Charles Rothenberg and
Burton B. Turkus, Politano’s new attorneys, should never have been inserted in
the last commitment order. When Justice Bonynge freed the prisoner the habeas
corpus proceeding was withdrawn.

~ Had 11 Months Married Life

But now that he is free, $12 will begin to pile up against
him and accumulate every week, unless, of course, his wife, Mary, who had him
jailed, decides not to prosecute him further for alimony arrears. Politano is
going to try to get some work at his trade, bricklaying, he said.

He regards his matrimonial experiences rather grimly. He
lived with his wife 11 months. Then she sued for separation, saying he was a
tyrant and peeved because she learned she didn’t have a fortune. He says three
days after he set up a home for his wife in a house he bought at 2422 West St.,
near Avenue Z, her mother and sister moved in and assumed complete command of
the household. After that, he said, he just couldn’t make his wife listen to
him at all. He ordered the in-laws out. They moved to a house nearby and Mrs.
Politano moved with them.

~ Enters Alimony Jail

Late in 1928 she got an award of $12 a week “temporary”
alimony. He served three terms of three months each on contempt adjudications
and then along came that order with the clause he should post a bond. His real
estate ventures had gone to smash by that time and he was entirely without
funds.

Politano’s numerous appeals for freedom have attracted wide
attention and several orgalizations have spoken for his release.

During his long stay in the alimony bastile Politano has
polished up on his English reading and writing. Late in January he wrote a
letter to The Eagle, protesting against his situation.

For the time being he will stay with his sister, who lives
at 274 ½ 22d St.